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According to the Princeton University Eviction Lab, 318,091 households have faced eviction proceedings during the pandemic in the 27 cities the research project tracks, including Phoenix, Milwaukee and Dallas, Reuters reported. Many more remain vulnerable to eviction and possible homelessness: By May, an estimated 7 million renters across the country will owe $40 billion in back rent, utilities and fees, Moody’s Analytics estimates. Before the pandemic, about 900,000 households were evicted each year. Most renters live in apartments or houses owned by small-scale “mom-and-pop” landlords, who often rely heavily on their rental income. But based on a review of hundreds of court filings across the country, as well as interviews with tenants, their lawyers and housing advocates, it’s the big, deep-pocketed corporate landlords with property portfolios spanning multiple states that have been the most aggressive in filing eviction cases, even as they have thrived in the pandemic. Since the pandemic began, large corporate landlords have filed nearly 70,000 eviction cases in just 27 counties in seven states analyzed by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that studies the impact of private equity investments on the public. Many of the big landlords, especially those focused on single-family homes, have benefited as higher-income families have fled to the suburbs for perceived safety and more space during the pandemic. Invitation Homes had its best year ever in 2020, with profits climbing to a record $200 million as occupancy rates neared 100%. Its share price has nearly doubled since March 2020. Invitation Homes ranked fifth among companies seeking evictions in the seven states examined by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, with 710 cases since the CDC moratorium took effect Sept. 4. Ahead of it were S2 Capital, a Dallas, Texas, investment firm, with 1,160 eviction suits; Ventron Management, with 1,134 cases against tenants in Georgia and Florida and which received $2.6 million under the federal Paycheck Protection Program; private equity firm Pretium Partners, which operates Progress Residential and Front Yard Residential, with 1,074 eviction suits; and Western Wealth Capital, with 1,018.

More than 700 properties or land parcels tied to the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe are expected to be up for auction in July as part of an ongoing bankruptcy case, Albuquerque Business First reported. The sales are necessary because of a December 2018, chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy stemming from child sexual abuse claims filed against the Archdiocese. The claims led to nearly 300 settlements, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The list of 732 properties likely won't be all sold individually. Most are parcels of vacant land scattered across 20 New Mexico counties. The properties include five acres of vacant, non-residential land in the Paradise Hills subdivision on Albuquerque's Westside. Several parcels of land are available as well in Sandoval County throughout the Rio Rancho Estates subdivision.

With its ill-equipped natural gas systems crippled by the cold, Texas’s exports across the Rio Grande froze up and 4.7 million customers in northern Mexico went without electricity — more than in Texas itself, the Washington Post reported. The spot price of gas jumped 30-fold as far west as Southern California. And all the way up by the Canadian border, gas utilities in Minnesota that turned to the daily spot market to meet demand say they had to pay about $800 million more than planned over the course of just five days as the Texas freeze-up pinched off supplies. “The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, said in an interview. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.” The Texas market is so large — second only to California’s — and its natural gas industry is so predominant that when things go wrong there, the impacts can be felt across the country. Minnesota’s biggest gas companies are putting forward plans to recoup their expenses by adding a surcharge to customers’ bills, which the state utility commission would first have to approve. Normally, such adjustments to account for winter prices go into effect in September, but Minnesota’s biggest gas utility, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, says the financial pinch is so great it wants to start billing customers next month — and charging them nearly 9 percent interest until the extraordinary costs are paid off.

A National Rifle Association board member said Wednesday that appointing a receiver to take charge of the organization — a tactic the NRA worried New York authorities would pursue before it filed bankruptcy — would spell the end of the 150-year-old gun rights group, the Wall Street Journal reported. “It would be disastrous,” board member retired Lt. Col. Willes Lee testified during the third week of trial over the organization’s January bankruptcy filing and allegations of spending abuses by management brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The NRA has said that it filed bankruptcy to prevent New York from putting the group into receivership. Ms. James sued to dissolve the NRA in August and is now seeking to either have the chapter 11 case thrown out or to bring in an independent trustee to take charge of the NRA in bankruptcy. Lt. Col. Lee’s testimony kicked-off the NRA’s defense of chief executive Wayne LaPierre and his decision to file the chapter 11 in January. Lt. Col. Lee and fellow board member Tom King on Wednesday praised Mr. LaPierre’s character and his leadership. The NRA has argued Mr. LaPierre is critical to the group’s survival. The NRA is seeking to keep control of its chapter 11 case so it can propose a reorganization plan and defeat a bid by New York authorities and its former ad agency Ackerman McQueen Inc. to wrest control of the bankruptcy from NRA management via a trustee. The NRA board will consider approving a reorganization plan at a meeting scheduled for May 1, Mr. Lee said. The group has been a New York registered not-for profit since 1871.

Opioid maker Mallinckrodt Plc filed a plan of reorganization Tuesday that has the support of opioid litigation claimants, holders of 84% in principal amount of unsecured notes and an undisclosed portion of term loan holders, according to court filings, Bloomberg News reported. The plan provides for the company’s revolving credit facility to be paid in full in cash. First- and second-lien term lenders would either be repaid in cash or with new takeback term loans plus cash for accrued interest and other payments, depending on the allowance of each group’s make-whole claims at the time of confirmation. Unsecured noteholders would receive a pro rata share of the takeback second-lien notes and equity shares in the reorganized company. The disclosure statement stipulates that the ad hoc group of unsecured noteholders hasn’t yet approved the language allocating takeback loans to the first- and second-lien holders. Opioid litigation claims would be channeled into a trust set aside for their settlement and payment. The company has previously said it would total $1.6 billion in structured payments. Mallinckrodt was the third major opioid maker to go under after being swamped by lawsuits alleging it profited by fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic.

Members of the Sackler family who own bankrupt OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma LP are worth approximately $11 billion, documents released yesterday by a congressional committee show, the Wall Street Journal reported. Members of the Sackler family have agreed to pay $4.28 billion over the next decade as part of a proposal for Purdue to exit bankruptcy and settle thousands of lawsuits filed by states, local governments and individuals blaming the company and its owners for helping fuel the nation’s opioid crisis. Summaries of the family wealth, turned over to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), also were seen by Purdue’s creditors during settlement talks, according to representatives for the two branches of the company’s family owners. A third branch of the family is no longer involved in Purdue Pharma and wasn’t included in Tuesday’s release by Rep. Maloney, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The documents show the Sacklers’ wealth includes more than $950 million in cash, more than $1 billion in real estate, another $1 billion in private-equity investments and $250 million in art, jewelry and other collectibles. The family owns stakes worth more than $1 billion in international drug companies, which are expected to be sold to help pay back creditors. The documents show much of the family’s wealth is held in dozens of trusts. A spokesman for the descendants of the late Mortimer Sackler said no party in the bankruptcy has challenged the accuracy or completeness of the wealth disclosure and that “we hope the focus will now be on concluding a resolution that will deliver timely resources to individuals, families and communities in need.”

Three current and former National Rifle Association board members testified yesterday that in favor of the appointment of an independent examiner to investigate the gun rights organization’s management, but said that efforts to dismiss its chapter 11 bankruptcy is a step too far, Reuters reported. The statements came during the seventh day of trial on motions from New York Attorney General Letitia James and the NRA’s former ad agency, Ackerman McQueen, that aim to have the case thrown out. They have argued that the bankruptcy was not filed for legitimate purposes under bankruptcy law.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog has opposed a request from certain National Rifle Association members seeking the appointment of an official committee to represent their interests in the gun rights organization’s chapter 11 case, saying they do not have the same status as equity holders under bankruptcy law, Reuters reported. In court papers filed on Sunday, the U.S. Trustee’s office urged U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale in Dallas to reject a motion from four NRA members to create the committee. The judge will consider the matter during a hearing on Wednesday, in the midst of a trial over the legitimacy of the NRA’s bankruptcy.